


Missed the Mark

by girl_wonder



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Genderbending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl_wonder/pseuds/girl_wonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She imagined her mother never would have asked this of her. AU where Sam and Dean are girls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missed the Mark

When Sam came home, the only lights on were in the kitchen, so she followed the sound of voices, her father's not so much lower than her sister's. The first thing she noticed was the first aid kit open on the table, gauze and antiseptic spread with the exactness of practice. The kitchen lamp hung low and reflected off a bottle of whiskey, the cup next to it half filled with amber liquid.

Sam frowned because her father had said he wouldn't anymore, before she saw her sister lift the glass and swallow long. Then she noticed that it wasn't her sister turned towards her father to wrap a bleeding hand, tape an open wound, it was the opposite; her father held her sister's left hand steady as he wrapped gauze around it once, twice, three times, tying it cleanly.

Their whole family had been in his seat before, wrapping knuckles, palms, twisted, broken fingers, but before it had always been Dad where Dean now sat, drinking whiskey and wiping sweat off her forehead with an already bandaged wrist. There was a low gasp when Sam saw the bruises climbing up her sister's arm to hide themselves under the sleeve of her shirt, telling the story of how the fight had gone down.

Someone grabbed Dean here, maybe shook her before she could break free. She'd hit them over and over again, probably used her legs like Dad had taught her, then hit them again when they tried to grab her wrist. She had punched them until her fists were bloody.

There was a weird questioning noise coming from somewhere and when Dean looked up, Sam realized that sound was coming from her own throat. Their father turned and Sam thought hysterically that if there were bruises on his face, if it was some screwed up excuse for training that caused this, she would break.

There weren't.

"Sam," Dad said. "Go study in my room."

"Why can't I go to my room?" Sam knew her question was plaintive. Dean was looking down, curling her hands into fists and making a pained face.

"There are some people in your room," Dad said, calmly, and the weird smoky rumble was in his voice, like he'd just spent the night at a bar and Dean had just dragged him home. He sounded sad.

Walking down the hall, Sam couldn't help glancing into the room she and Dean slept in, saw the Murphy sisters curled onto each other, eyes closed. When she paused in front of the door, a floorboard creaked and the elder sister, Carolina, Dean's best friend - probably Dean's only friend - jerked her head up. Sam recognized fear in the way her eyes flickered around.

"It's ok," Sam whispered. "Go back to sleep."

Even in the half-light she recognized the stain of a black eye, blood pooling and swelling, bruising her too young for this face.

*****

Sam was sitting still staring at the same algebra problem when Dean came in, her hair neatly tied back in a ponytail, wearing a T-shirt that covered her stomach, and face clean of makeup. In the light of their dad's nightstand lamp, she looked like a sixteen-year-old girl, one of the normal ones that went to football games and made muffins for the 4-H bake sale.

Sitting next to Sam, she didn't look up, instead rubbing the pad of her thumb over a broken fingernail. Eventually she brought the acrylic remnants up to her bottom lip, rubbing the roughness against it, slowly. In the pause, she looked like she was thinking about what to say. For their whole lives, Dean had been everything to Sam, except for thoughtful. Dean always spoke before she thought, saying smart things, dumb things, mean things without meaning to. The pause was strange for both of them.

"If anyone ever touches you in a way that you don't want them to," Dean said quickly, her voice rushed and muffled a little by the hand in front of her face, "you need to tell me, ok? Don't. Hide shit like that." On her other hand, the pinky nail was torn off, too. Dean always kept her nails long, acrylic squares colored red and treated like claws.

It meant that she had clawed someone hard enough to rip them off. Without makeup, Sam could see where there were small round bruises around her throat that any other night would have meant a few hours at lookout point with a guy.

Although if that had been true, Dean would have hidden from Dad with high collars, a necklace, and a breakup with the guy that didn't understand her strict, "No hickeys" rule.

Tonight she just looked sixteen, and Sam imagined that if she had to, she'd look scared for the police.

"Even if I won't like it. Even if it's someone you think I like, ok?" she stopped. Turning, she looked at Sam squarely. "Even if it's Dad. Ok?"

Sam wasn't stupid. She pulled her arms up, shivering, and crossed them over her chest. "Dean, did Dad ever touch you?"

Dean didn't smile. "No. Never. But, sometimes, Sammy, you look a lot like Mom." She raised a hand and tucked part of Sam's hair behind her ear, and the scent of antiseptic lotion was strong in Sam's nose.

They both looked up when their father's heavy footsteps approached his room, he knocked once before opening the door. "Dean, it's time to go."

Behind him, the Murphy sisters were wearing two of his old flak jackets. They looked swallowed up by them. Rubbing a gauze covered knuckle lightly across Sam's neck, Dean stood, pulled on her jean jacket and followed their dad out.

*****

The next day it was all over school that Jack Murphy was in jail and that his girls were being taken by the state. When he'd been arrested, he'd been beaten pretty bad. He'd said it was a bar fight, but everyone looked out of the corner of their eyes at Sam and she knew they thought her dad had done it.

When Dean picked Sam up from school, driving the same way she always did, fast and stopping abruptly, one of the moms - one of the ones that usually looked askance at Dean's shirts, clucked their tongues at her tight jeans and swinging hips - came up and leaned in the window. Dean tucked her bandaged hands into her jacket pockets and smiled up at the woman when she leaned in, smelling like cinnamon.

Sam looked down and tried to straighten her books on the bottom of the car. It was always humiliating when someone with good intentions tried to talk to her sister.

"Now, I know that you probably don't want to say nothing, but you tell your Dad he did right," she said. "And you girls feel free to come by my house anytime, we always have room at our table."

Dean smiled, brilliantly, like Sam had only ever seen her smile with family before. "That's kind of y'all," she said, smiling until the woman left.

There was something weird about the way she said it and it wasn't even that she said it at all, because Sam almost thought that Dean lived to be snide and nasty to people who were kind at heart. Dean looked thoughtfully out and said, "You know what we do helps people."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, more to say something than because she believed it.

*****

That weekend Dad took them out shooting. He had lined up a series of cans and had given Dean the new rifle. Dad might have said it was because they were out of practice, but Sam knew that look of calm, that look of confidence that Dean got with a gun in her hands. It was the same way she looked when she leaned over to break in a pool game.

Sitting in the bed of the truck, long legs tucked up under her chin, Sam watched Dean pick off the old beer cans one by one. Their father was leaning against the side of the truck, smiling slightly, the way that he did whenever Dean handled a new weapon well. He would tousle her hair, and say, "If the army hired women sharp shooters you'd blow 'em away."

Dad didn't talk much and Sam wondered a lot whether that was the reason that Dean was so loud all the time. Whenever they were together, anyone could see the way that her father lit up when Dean smiled, the way that she made hard-earned chuckles come from him.

It hurt sometimes, the way that Dean's good shooting eye and sass made their father happier than Sam's consistent grades, the teachers' notes sent home with words like, "excellent" and "college material" underlined.

"She's getting good with the new rifle," Sam said. She tried to keep the bitterness hidden, but she didn't think that either her father or Dean ever noticed anything that wasn't in the sight of a gun anyway. Rolling a shell between her palms, she glanced at Dad. When he looked up at her, with all the sadness of a wife gone thirteen years, two daughters raised on his own, Sam looked away, saw Dean lining up the last three cans again.

"You know," Dad said. Sam waited for the usual admonishment about her practicing with weaponry more. It was always tied to their mother, how their fight wasn't about violence, their training was about being good enough to wreak havoc, cause vengeance. Sam had no idea what vengeance meant to their father other than training and tracking something Sam wasn't sure existed.

"When she was younger, when you both were younger, I tried..."

Sam shook her head, before she could stop. She said, "Tried what, Dad? My earliest memories are you taking us all over, ghost hunting." Her nails bit the inside of her palms, said loudly: stop. She fought the urge to say more.

"I tried to get her to wear dresses and not get involved in all of this." Dad looked out at Dean, loading new rounds in carefully. "She used to charm the pants off of the boys at school, come home wearing jeans and shirts. I just thought it might be best if I let you girls be. The day that girl listens to me will be the day hell freezes over."

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that that was such bullshit, Dean listened to Dad more than she listened to herself, but Sam knew that the both of them would always be a little blind to that. Anything outside a crosshair, she thought again.

"Hey, Sammy, see if you can top that!" Dean whooped and grinned, pumping her fist in the air.

Dad smiled, said, "Army would've loved her."

*****

Dean had been cooking since she learned how to operate a can opener. Burned bread, soup cooked to the bottom of the pan, and unnamed meat dishes were something that Sam grew used to. None of the Winchester sisters' friends were ever invited over. Not that Sam ever would have invited friends over, and Dean didn't seem to have any friends since Carolina left. A place at the Winchester table was hard earned, and the food was never plentiful.

Sam learned that friends were not invited to the Winchester table when she saw Dean scrape together a meal out of nothing, make water and carrots into stew, ditch school some days and come home with rabbit carcasses in a cooler on the backseat of the Impala.

In their family, Sam learned well that you didn't question Dad, didn't ask for more than he gave. She learned by example, watching Dean never ask for more spending money. It wasn't deference that made her sister ignore the way that their father carefully lined monthly bills up and spend all of their money on a roof over their head, electricity, water, and weaponry.

His checkbook was kept in a drawer of his dresser, under his socks and it had the amount in his bank account written with carefully small script. Her father never had small handwriting except when he was cramping it to fit the lines of a check.

Dean would get what was left, and if she minded that they were living paycheck to paycheck, she never said anything until she was old enough to get a job on her own.

Later, Dean and Dad would learn how to scam, but what Sam remembered about everything before high school was cool gun-metal in the place of food. Bullets that cost more than a week's dinners.

*****

The summer came, hit them hard and fast. It heated up one day in June and the cicadas didn't stop singing until November.

Dean usually didn't say anything about the sort of decisions she made, or she said too much, but she got it into her head to start building muscle. She tried protein shakes, muscle supplements, running five miles a day, lifting in the boys' gym with football players watching.

Sam woke, sleepy every single time, and followed her sister out to the car. She got in and curled against the door for the drive to the track.

It would be the only time in their whole lives that Sam would remember Dean voluntarily waking up that early. But to run midday would have been murder, the heat too much to bear.

At the school track, Sam sat on the bleachers, leaning back, counting her sister's laps. She was getting faster, but all that seemed to result in was a slimmer shape, a loss of hips. There was no strength building and it pissed Dean off. She ran six miles in the morning, now.

Sometime in August, the football players began their training, and they always caught Dean's last half mile: four laps around the track, a warm-down walk, and stretches that had the boys staring. Sam wanted to point out that her sister was more than a hunk of meat, except Dean seemed to enjoy the attention, her hips swung when she walked over to the fence, leaned over and called Sammy back to the car.

Eventually, it hurt too much for Dean to move, and Sam forced her to the doctor. Even though they couldn't pay, there was a free clinic in the next city over. The doctor took one look, said, "Shin splints," and Sam found herself threatening to tie Dean to the couch if she didn't rest.

It was summer and work was good for Dad, so money was plentiful. Sam learned how to cook, learned that if she waited until the end of the week, sometimes the guy who replaced magazines at the grocery would let Sam take a few of the old ones home. In the meantime, she made Dean watch the grainy television she'd spliced from the neighbors.

Maturity was startling to Sam, a new freedom she hadn't known could exist in their cramped house with their cramped life.

*****

When they were younger, Dean had slept with one arm curled around Sam's waist, and as she grew older, it hadn't stopped. Two girls in a bed mean twice the security, their father had said.

One day, though, sometime in grade school, a second bed had appeared in Sam and Dean's bedroom. Sam had taken to it immediately, assuming that during nightmares it wouldn't matter, Dean would be there anyway.

The first few times, Dean hadn't been, had stayed still in her own bed and only after Sam woke and crawled back under her sister's blankets did she latch onto Sam tightly, as though Sam's nightmares had been her own.

She never stopped doing that later, always waiting for Sam to make the first move, be the first one to ask for help. Sam imagined that her mother never would have made her ask.

*****

In the toybox that their father had brought with them from house to house, from life to life, before settling on this one, Sam found old stuffed bears, a set of baby clothes with moth holes she could stick her finger through.

Underneath were birth certificates, two of them, both of them covered in plastic sheaths.

Sam looked at her name and smiled, tracing the looping calligraphy, her finger squeaking on plastic.

"Samantha Winchester," Sam said. She wondered why that girl was someone she wasn't. She wondered how she could become that girl.

Dean's was underneath hers, just as carefully covered, with two baby hand prints on it, two baby feet inked and commemorated by some nurse in Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

"Deana Winchester," Sam said. Deana tasted funny on her tongue, like that was the little girl who had a mom with long blonde hair and a smile that lit up a room. That was the girl who grew up going to church and riding horses instead of boys.

Sammy shut the trunk on ideas of what might have been.

*****

Summer was when Dad trained them harder, pushed them farther. It was the only time Sam wore jeans, because she only had one pair, and she only used them for hunting. Jeans were just enough protection so that when she fell she didn't bloody her knees.

The rest of the time, Sam wore dresses, light cotton Dean had picked up at a Salvation Army a few towns over. Sam had been the same height as her sister until fifth grade when she started growing, and didn't seem to be stopping any time soon. Her legs grew long and thin, surprising all of them.

Eventually, a few months into the growth spurt, Dean had stopped letting her buy pants that would hide the oddly shaped scars on her knees and calves. Dresses she didn't grow out of as quickly, because for all of her awkward height, Sam didn't grow breasts like her sister, she stayed flat and slender.

Dean's breasts had come in as a surprise one day, as though overnight they'd sprung into existence. Later, when her sister would take her out of the house to the railroad tracks so they could watch the stars and drink beer, talk without the specter of their mother hanging over them, Dean would say that until high school she had bound her breasts. Dean used to wrap them with elastic bandages, press them tight against her chest so that they were nearly invisible.

Laughing, Dean said that back then, she thought if she became a girl, a real girl, Dad would stop taking her on hunts, she'd be left alone at the house, like a girl.

Something had changed, though, and Sam never found out what had made her sister pull off the bandages, start wearing push up bras instead.

For the first few weeks, Sam felt naked in the dresses, legs bare. She felt like a girl and wondered if that was what Dean was trying to show her without bandages pressing her flat chest even more flat. Then she got used to them, got used to how much cooler it was wearing something that let air up her thighs, tickling. She found that in summer dresses with leg room, she could run just as fast as in pants.

*****

Dad said her new height gave her an advantage of reach.

"You need to be faster than these boys, Sam," he said. It was a warning, like any warning he'd ever given her.

Their father always looked them straight in the eye, not like other men, who tried to look down Dean's shirt or up Sam's skirt. When they were young, before they knew the difference between respect and attention, their father used to hug them, one arm around each of them, and say, "Your mother used to demand that men respect her. You girls gotta do the same."

Their mother was the paragon of all women. Until she was older and in college, Sam didn't realize that she saw her mother as Elizabeth Bennet, Juliet, and Clarisse McClellan. Her mother was the woman Dean didn't ever try to be, the woman Dean tried to be the opposite of with her cheap clothes and swinging hips, the woman Sam needed to be.

So, when her Dad said that her new height had the advantage of reach, Sam learned well how to fight. She was using herself as the advantage for the first time since her father gave her a mock up knife and showed her how to use it.

Dean laughed when Sam got the better of her again. Underneath her thighs, her sister vibrated with delight. "Good work, Sammy. We'll make a fighter of you yet."

Smiling, Sam nodded, but she was learning more now, she was learning how to smile at teachers and get extra credit, how to build her mind into someplace she didn't go just to escape the underlying tension of home.

*****

The first day of high school, Sam supposed that it was inevitable she would end up with a teacher who had had Dean. Dean was a senior, had made more enemies than friends in four years. So, the day obviously couldn't be complete unless Sam ended up in the principal's office.

She sat, hands between her knees and thought, of all the stupid sisters to have, she had to have the one who made girls angry enough to take it out on the freshman sister. Sometimes, it really, really sucked to be related to Dean.

"So, Samantha, why are y'all fighting on the first day of school? Am I going to have to already start marking your file like Deana's?"

There were two files on Principal Leary's desk, one was really thick, and Sam didn't have to wonder which was Dean's. "No, ma'm," Sam said.

Dean was resting against the car door when Sam got to the parking lot, a huge football player leaning in towards her. She laughed and shook her long hair a little, put a hand up to his chest and then leaned in to kiss him lightly. Sam stared, knew how this would go. Dean was a tease when she wanted to be, and it looked like purpose, this.

Sam paused, uncertain whether to go back to school, wait until Dean was done or shove past them, because she was in trouble already because of Dean. Pursing her lips, she walked up to the car, opening the passenger door and slamming it behind her.

They ignored her.

"You promise," Dean said, her voice a growl.

"Yeah, totally," the guy sounded desperate.

"Ok, then." There was this sound that Sam was too familiar with and then Dean was climbing in, too. When they were on the main road, Dean said, "That was Duane. He'll be helping you out from now on."

Sam glared out the window. "How? By sticking his hand up your skirt?"

At the next stoplight, Dean slammed the brakes abruptly. "Do you want to deal with those bitches on your own?" There was something hard in her voice that Sam had never heard before. "I mean, I'm leaving, I am getting out of that school. They're probably going to fail me before graduation, and even if they don't, I can't be everywhere."

Dean was gripping the steering wheel tightly. Sam tentatively put a hand on hers. She was never sure when her sister would snap, when her sister wouldn't.

"Ok then," Dean said, and turned the wheel, dislodging Sam's hand.

*****

Duane turned out to be nice, and he began following her everywhere like some sort of deluded puppy. If Sam hadn't known better, she would have thought that Duane liked her, but she did know better. Any guy who'd ever met her sister liked Dean better than Sam.

During lunch, the girls pursed their lips and frowned, but Duane kind of nudged her with his tray and they headed towards the football player table. Sitting her in the middle of the table, Duane said, "This is Sam." There were some half hearted waves and general disinterest, even from the girlfriends, who only introduced themselves when Duane prompted them.

"Duane, what is this? Your service project?" The football captain looked at Sam the way that she'd seen people in bars look at Dean. Sam crossed her arms over her chest, knew that she was found lacking there, that her legs were too long, too thin.

Looking down at the lunch that Dean had scraped together enough money for her to buy in the cafeteria, Sam wondered what the point was of Dean pulling her out of the fire only to toss her happily into the frying pan.

"Hey, shut up, Gar," Duane put a hand on her shoulder. "She's cool. And she's already smarter than you. If you weren't such an ass, maybe she'll help you pass math this time."

There was a low snicker that went around the table and ended when the captain glared. After lunch, Duane took her tray back, and Garret moved in. Sam's first thoughts were about how he was moving, how he was bigger than her and she'd have to do a lot of moving, keep out of reach of his arm length. She could use her backpack to get in one good swing.

It was too ingrained in her to not see him as someone she'd have to beat.

"So, uh," Garret looked around. "Are you _really_ good at math?"

When Duane came back, there was a Tuesday night study session, and soon it turned into Tuesday night math with the football players, Wednesday night English with the cheerleaders, and extra help on Thursday. Her math teacher would stop her after class and give her hints about their tests and Principal Leary would smile at her in the halls, like she'd never threatened to ruin Sam's schooling for being Dean's sister.

After they expelled Dean for bringing a switchblade to school, she'd pick up Sam like in middle school, the black Impala making mothers frown and boys stare. But this time there was a weird twist in her smile, and all she did was pinch Sam's cheek hard when Sam climbed in the car.

"My little girl, all grown up."

Sam frowned down at her knees, hid the scholarship applications deep in her backpack and knew that she would be so much better than her sister some day.

*****

Dean twisted and shot, four bullets that Sam heard rush over her head as she dropped, rolled, pushed herself up on bloody palms.

"Run, Sam," Dean said, a command in a timbre higher than their father's.

Sam ran, found cover behind an oak, slamming herself against it, so she could cover her sister and said, "Dean. Go."

Dean sprinted, legs not nearly as long as Sam's but Sam was only watching her move, making sure that her bullets sailed true and the thing never touched her sister. She found that her lips were pulled back from her teeth, a grin on her face that matched the one on Dean's.

This could not be something that her mother would have asked of her.

*****

Sam remembered the day that Dean and Dad first figured out that if Dean was the one hustling pool, more money could be made. She had followed Dad down to the bar to drag him home for dinner, and when they came back hours later, Sam was finishing her homework.

Neither of them was drunk, which made it worse that they were so delighted. Dean pulled the wad of cash out of her tight, tight jeans and grinned when Sam counted it slowly.

Five hundred dollars.

She learned after that that her sister had started a circuit of bars on nights she wasn't working. Their father smiled, and looked benevolent, as though she had finally learned how to bow hunt.

Sam couldn't stand it, the way that Dean was making more than kisses off of her smile, she was making money and there was something wrong about that.

Like everything else she blamed her father for, the dark weight of her sister's new occupation rotted inside Sam. Every time, they came back Dean was grinning like she'd just fired off a perfect clip, their father smiling a small half smile without teeth, and Sam felt the tight ball of anger in her stomach wrench. Bile rose in her throat when her sister quit working at the minimart to practice pool more.

"That's great, Dean," Sam said, over her shoulder as she walked out of the kitchen. In her room, she could hear her dad and sister's muffled words. Her nails dug crescents into her palms, deep.

Her sister had already gone out when she came out into the living room. Sam had assumed her father would follow, the Impala's rumble was already fading, because her father usually went to make sure that nothing bad happened. Sam didn't know what could happen that was worse than her sister tricking men out of money with kisses and promises.

She smiled tightly at her father and wondered if he noticed that.

In the kitchen she took milk out, they could afford milk now, and waited for her father to say whatever he'd stayed behind to say. She knew that she and her father were both predictable creatures, even in their fights. She would hold her anger in, exploding at him when she could least afford anger, he would quietly and completely shut her out, as though his heart was like everything else in his universe: controllable.

"How can you let her sell herself like that?" Sam asked, propping a hip on the doorway.

"She _not_ selling herself," her father said, quieting her. "Don't say that about your sister. I try –"

"It's always _try_ , Dad." Sam stared at the milk. "Why can't you see that this can't be right, what she's doing?"

Their father had never raised his voice to them, he wounded them both much more quietly, with silence and a cold shoulder. "Your sister," he said. "Is outsmarting those men. She is not prostituting herself. And I _don't_ want you suggesting that she is. She's your sister and you will respect her."

"How can I when she doesn't respect herself enough to get a real job?" Sam drank her milk and put the cup in the sink. She wanted to finish the argument. She wanted to finish the tension between them.

"I'm going to college next year," she said, and that surprised her. She had been saving that one until she was more ready, until she was ready to make her break for good.

Somehow, she'd thought if she didn't bring it up like this, when both she and her father were hissing mad at each other, it wouldn't be the thing that broke their family. If she could only phrase it right, there would be some tenuous string left binding her to him as his daughter, if nothing else.

Her father paused, face drawn. "Not at the local college," he said. It was so many different questions disguised as a statement.

She answered them all: she was going away from a town where everyone knew her sister, where everyone knew her, she was going away from tiny hotel rooms, she was going away from guns and knives, she was going to be _normal_.

"No," Sam said.

The pause was so long that Sam had to look up from her hands, licking her lip, trying to think of a way this wasn't going to be bad. Her father was staring over her shoulder and it was like every time he'd ignored her presence, but worse, because this time she thought it was for real.

"I'm going to go make sure your sister doesn't get herself into trouble," her father said.

*****

College was exactly the way that Sam wanted it to be, and exactly the way she hadn't known it could be. It was warm summer days and California rains during the winter. She stayed on an all girls floor by an accident of housing for her first year, but she imagined that if she hadn't, then she never would have met her roommate Jess.

Jess was blonde and rushed a sorority her first semester. She tugged on Sam's arm and Sam followed, because Jess smiled at her and made her want to follow Jess everywhere. They quit almost immediately, Jess couldn't handle the hazing and Sam had accidentally broken a sister's nose when they faux-kidnapped her.

It was an automatic reaction when someone grabbed her around the neck, don't struggle right away, lean forward, snap back, twist and you're free, baby girl. Sam practically heard her sister's voice in her head beating out the moves like a metronome.

After that, Sam was out, and none of the sisters even looked at her again, but it was ok because Jess realized she liked girls. Really liked them. Sam would look at the stolen hotel "Do Not Enter" sign on the door and go to study in the stairwell. When she came back, the room would be airing out, window wide open no matter what the weather. Jess would come back in a towel, freshly showered and smelling like apple bodywash.

"Sam," she would say, gripping the towel with one hand. "Oh, my _god_. You need to become a lesbian right now so that I can show you this thing Trisha does with her tongue."

Usually, Sam laughed it off, because it was Jess trying to include her.

The next year, all her friends were really Jess's friends, and she was slowly getting used to how all of them treated her like the token heterosexual. They took her to gay bars and apologized and laughed and never offered because she was their straight friend.

Inside her heart, there was a low ticking clock, counting down the seconds between her present and the moment when Dean would come in, tight pants and low cut top.

Sam just figured it was a matter of time, really. When they went to karaoke night at Rouge, and someone got on stage and growled into the mike, "I've been a bad, bad girl," Sam buried her face in her hands. She didn't need to look up to know her sister was flirting through spotlights and a bad sound system, her voice just this side of decent.

"Oh, my _god_ ," Jess was formulaic when she was impressed. "Who is that? Why do I not know her?"

Trisha, no longer a love interest, still a friend said, "Wow. That's. Wow. She's coming over here, no one do anything."

Sam kept her head in her hands, felt a familiar hand trail up her spine, her sister's mouth bite down on her earlobe. "Get off," she said, elbowing Dean's middle.

"Oh, that's no way to greet your sister."

Laughing, Dean took the empty seat next to Sam and said, "Hey now, how're ya'll doing? I'm Dean - Sam's sister."

About half the boys Sam had ever known fell for Dean the first time they saw her, the rest fell kind of slowly, but one day she'd look up and they'd be staring at her sister with wonder. Amazed. Sam wondered if that was how her dad used to stare at her mom.

Comparing the wonder to the hunger in most men's eyes, Sam was sure the former was more honest.

Beside Jess, Sam had clear sight of all the girls and saw that Dean's batting average was just as good with girls as it was with boys.

Dean grinned at Sam, that beautiful, delighted smile she got when people liked her, and said, "So, Sam hasn't been saying too many bad things about me?"

Immediately, Trisha and Anna and Vickie protested, reassuring Dean that Sam hadn't. Dean was a pro, not focusing on anyone, charming with the grace of practice. It was easy to fall back into habits with Dean, be her wingman, set up her plays with casual banter.

Somehow, she'd erased, with bitterness and anger, the comfort of being Dean's sister.

Until Dean leaned toward Jess and said, "You're her roommate, has she been holing up in her room studying all the time?" Sam forgot that Dean never wanted the first half, the half the wanted her. Always, she wanted the holdouts. She wanted the people like Jess who smiled like Mona Lisa and appeared unmoved by her charm.

Inside her chest, Sam felt a hard weight, because even she could see how good they would be together. She found herself glaring at Dean. For a millisecond, Dean looked confused, unsure until her eyes flicked to Jess and then she went back to charming everyone but Jess.

After, in the bathroom, Sam looked into the mirror and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, trying to keep calm. This was ok. So what if Dean had been showing that growing up in the south didn't mean that you couldn't like girls the way that you liked boys.

It wasn't like there was something about Jess, about the way that she moved and the way that she wore red and gold Stanford sleep shorts on Saturdays, her thighs smooth and her smiles brilliant. Sam had to remind herself that she was straight and that it was just like in high school, where she didn't like boys until her sister started poaching in her class.

In the mirror, she looked blank, cheekbones a little prominent, without makeup, face still damp from being splashed with water. As she pulled out lipgloss that Jess had bought her for her birthday, the door opened and Dean sauntered in, cowboy boots and jeans, a tank top showing that it wasn't in the family to be built like Sam was - tall and thin, without breasts to speak of.

"What's your problem, _sis_?" Dean asked, intense and closer than Sam would have liked, but this was how close they used to stand, when they were back to back, protecting each other against something that their father never should have sent two teenage girls to fight.

But when they were kids, it used to be comfortable, reassuring to have her sister this close, this nearby in case something happened.

"Why are you here?" Sam asked, backing up to the mirror, wall to her back and that was usually the safest spot to be, unless you were fighting ghosts.

"Dad's missing," Dean said. It was like a gut punch, unexpected and not telegraphed because Sam had expected something flip, and answer like, 'why? Am I poaching on your territory?' or 'miss me?'

"He's been gone for a few weeks and I tracked him down to his last location," Dean said, pulling out a beaten AAA map, one of California. A town called Jericho had been circled in blue ballpoint, the GPS address written next to it, a series of numbers that created a Pavlovian response in Sam.

 _Get there_ , Sam's whole body said. _Get there now_.

She drummed her fingers against her thigh, quick, a habit she'd picked up from Jess, a way to help give her time to think.

"Dad went hunting. And he's missing," Dean said. "Sam. I need you."

It was enough. Sam nodded. "Ok. Let me get my stuff."

*****

When she packed, she slid in the workout bras automatically, the jeans and the hair ties, the tennis shoes.

"Are you two going hiking?" Jess asked, sitting cross legged on the bed, looking confused at the compass in her hand.

"My dad's probably out in the woods somewhere," Sam said. When she reached out for the compass, her fingers brushed Jess's and she felt the shiver she always did when they touched. "I'll be back before the LSATs."

Jess's lips twisted and before Sam knew it, her roommate had wrapped arms around her, pressing a kiss to her lips. "Come back," she said.

Sam blinked, said, "Yeah," in a distant, odd way.

*****

It actually went strangely smoothly. Except for the times when Sam had to talk to women (they took one look at Dean's shirt, her jeans, the high ass-kicking boots she wore and clamed up), everyone was helpful.

After explaining that the warnings on her credit card were because of an ex who'd stolen them, the cops let Dean off into Sam's custody.

"I'm real sorry," Dean said. "I know I should get new ones, but I'm just tryin' to get as far away from him as I can."

The cop offered a handkerchief.

At the house, after they'd watched the woman melt into the floor, Sam said, "You think mom loved us like that?"

"Do I think Mom loved us enough to kill us because Dad cheated on her?" Dean asked, confused.

"No," Sam snorted, exasperated. "Do you think that mom loved us so much she'd go crazy because of us?"

Mom was an idea that Sam held like a picture, flat, lacking dimensions. She was everything Dean wasn't, an inverse in black and white.

"Mom loved you so much she died for you," Dean said shortly. "You ready to go?"

The drive back was silent except for the angry girl rock that Dean loved.

*****

When she came back to cookies and the smell of Jess's perfume fresh in the apartment, she thought that Dean was right. If she told Jess, it would mean that maybe there was something between them, something more than roommates.

But, there was blood, and fire, and her sister shoving her out the door. There was the Impala and there was a knife in her hand, the word _vengeance_ suddenly understood.

*****

end


End file.
